Thursday, February 03, 2011

photo sharing

I’ve reached the magic number of 200 photos on my flickr photostream, which means it is decision time. If I add more photos, the oldest ones will disappear from public view, and only the 200 most recent ones remain visible. Unless, of course, if I upgrade and pay an annual fee for a pro membership.

I’m not sure what to do yet. I love flickr a lot, the groups, the contacts, the easy handling, everything. But the number of clicks I’m getting per photo is a little disappointing in comparison with the sites I have used before, namely fotocommunity and view.

In flickr, only three of my 200 photos have clocked up more than 100 clicks, and the median is 24 clicks. In fotocommunity, where I have only around 40 photos, and am allowed only one upload per week, all of my photos reach more than 100 clicks, six have more than 300, and three have more than my highest-scoring flickr picture. And this without any effort to promote the pictures, and without any active contacts.

In View, it used to be quite slow going, with typical click rates in the teens, but a recent architecture pic got 1300 views within two days, and I still don’t understand why.

Now there may be trivial reasons behind these differences – e.g. in flickr you can get a good impression of the photos from looking at the mid-sized version shown in the user’s photostream, so you don’t necessarily need to click it to appreciate it. But still …

For the time being, I’ll focus on fotocommunity (where I’ll also hit a limit for free uploads soon, I think it’s at 50 photos), while building up a reserve of decent photos, such that if I decide to upgrade flickr, I’ll really have something worthwhile to show there.

So watch this space, and any opinions appreciated …


Here's a blog-exclusive photo for you:



This is in Oxford, seen from the Mill Stream Walk by the river Thames (Lower Fisher Row).

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